I found this Man Repeller post via the Holisticism newsletter. (One of my favorite reads every week.) It captures one of the important ideas I’ve been working with for several weeks now.

As I was trying to settle on a word for 2019, I went looking to a couple of oracle decks for inspiration: Lucy Cavendish’s Oracle of the Mermaids and Oracle of the Dragonfae. I didn’t find my word there, but I did pull one card from each deck that caught my eye and seemed like it captured some energy I wanted to live in 2019.

From the Oracle of the Mermaids, Sanctuary:

and from the Oracle of the Dragonfae, Melusine:

I didn’t know until I read the card descriptions in the deck guidebooks that Melusine is actually the mermaid depicted in Sanctuary. So I chose Melusine twice.

Who is Melusine?

If you’re big into mermaid mythology, you know her already. And even if you aren’t, you probably do, because this is her, too:

That I do need to enforce more boundaries. I’m lucky to have a lot of family support, so I do get a fair amount of me-time as compared with most moms of young children, but I don’t use it wisely and I want to start doing that.

That I need to really lean into being myself. In any version of the story, Melusine and her loved ones face the consequences of keeping a part of yourself hidden as well as of not respecting boundaries. Enforcing boundaries and being yourself can be balanced, and I want to work on that balance.